The Day I Lost Faith in the Stubborn Pride of Farmers

Your support keeps me going, I really appreciate you!I’d worked with Jeff for a few weeks out on the farm, about half a year before he took his own life. I can’t remember if I was driving yet. I suspect I wasn’t.His dad had sent him to work at our place to see if a change of scenery would do him any good. I immediately sensed Jeff’s pain, but I didn’t have the tools to help. I lacked the wisdom. I lacked the understanding. I had compassion, but that proved to be… useless.At no point did anyone ever consider trying a tactic that didn’t involve back-breaking labor.“Let’s sweat it out of him!”“He’s being ridiculous!”“If he wants to whine and cry all the time, well, we’ll show him!”Then, in their infinite wisdom, they elected that I should be his partner in labor. Not them. Not the adults. Not the ones with the life experience to maybe fix things. Nope. It had to be me.Farm logic.“Sad are you? Well, go out and work for twelve hours and you won’t have the strength to be sad!”Talking with Jeff proved difficult. Every conversation spiraled into hopelessness. I tried, lord help me I tried, but he refused to see even the chance of good in anything. Normally I can coax a smile out of anyone, but not Jeff. Eventually, I gave up. I sensed that I might be in danger of sinking too.We worked in silence.Jeff worked hard. He was strong. When he ultimately decided to direct that strength to the purpose of self-harm, there would be no doubt. After all, on the farm, they tell you not to leave a job half done. They drive that lesson into you.Well, he’d show them.By the time he’d made up his mind, Jeff knew well the futility of asking for help.I worked beside Jeff wielding a shovel and a pitchfork from within a cloud of hopelessness. Jeff stood at the bottom of his deep hole waving and calling out, “Come on down here. You’re a darn fool staying where you are!”“Why don’t you climb up and have a look around instead? You’ll see it’s not so bad.”“Climb up? From the way I see it, you’re the one at the bottom.”He wasn’t all wrong.Jeff quit after a few weeks. He bragged about landing a paying job and I wished him well. I never saw him again.The months passed and winter came. The bleak winter months when the sky is gray. In my father’s truck, father at the wheel, the cab reeking with the smell of oil and dirt, I got the news.In that life, you never get your hands completely clean. Your fingertips sting from cuts. You appreciate the cuts because the sticky blood on your fingers makes it easier to grasp screws and bolts and tools.I’d often wondered if it was good to have rust and pesticides and mud getting into my bloodstream. But that’s the kind of question that gets you laughed at if you pose it to your betters.“The boy is afraid of getting his hands dirty! Ha!”“It’s not getting my hands dirty, it’s when I get a cut. Is it safe to handle oil with an open wound…”“The kid thinks he’s too good to work! What a pansy!”It’s not easy to endure mockery when you’re dirty and your accuser is clean. It’s worse still when you’re standing and he’s sitting, a cool drink perched on the armrest of his recliner.“Look at you with your white shirt and your soft, pink hands lecturing me on the importance of hard work.”An accusation like that is enough to bring the rage.“How dare you! We were working those fields before you were ever born! This land has soaked up more of our blood than you have coursing through your veins! Don’t you ever question our commitment to labor! Now get back out there and do the job you were assigned and don’t come back until it’s done!”It’s called ‘back-sassing’ when you point out an obvious truth. Your betters consider it as a ‘slap request.’ That’s the one thing you can ask for on a farm that you can be assured of getting.In rural places they know there are some thoughts that have to be beaten out of a boy. Traditional wisdom states that no good can come from forming new ideas based on evidence.Back in the truck father said, “Remember Jeff…”The words were casual, but instantly I knew. Jeff was dead. I felt…It had been so obvious. Why hadn’t anyone stopped it? Why hadn’t anyone done anything?My father continued, “His parents had him seeing a therapist because he kept threatening to kill himself. The therapist said they should just ignore him. Well, he went through with it. Sad. Too bad he didn’t have a better therapist.”As if that was all that could be said.“Too bad?” I replied.“Yeah, too bad.”“That’s it? Too bad?”Father shrugged. This was the farmer way. We had an answer. We had a narrative. The family did everything it could. The therapist was incompetent. That’s the end of the story. It’s kind of a relief actually.Too bad?No, I wasn’t going to be part of this.“Jeff’s dad rode him too hard,” I said.There was the squeal of brakes and the next thing I knew the car had slammed to a halt and my dad was pointing at me. “Don’t you dare say that. Jeff’s parents loved him. They are in agony. You can’t even imagine!”“So all of a sudden feelings matter?” I snapped back. “Why didn’t that apply when Jeff said he was hurting?”Father took a deep breath. I knew it well. It was a warning that he was about to lose control. “The therapist failed Jeff,” he hissed.“We all failed Jeff,” I spat back knowing full well I was serving up a slap request. My father’s hand twitched. But he didn’t hit me. I suppose he thought I should feel grateful. Instead, he threw the truck back into drive and jerked onto the road causing a rooster tail of gravel to strike the trees behind us.We rode in silence from then on. The issue was closed. Jeff’s fate had been written. His parents were loving people who had done everything right. This was a senseless, unavoidable tragedy. The therapist with his fancy “elite liberal” education was to blame. Some kids just die and there’s nothing that can be done. To say otherwise is an intolerable show of disrespect.It didn’t matter that anyone could see the problems had existed long before the therapist had ever entered the picture.The rural mindset can’t handle that kind of reflection. It’s too painful to contemplate the possibility that kids like Jeff, and all the others, might have been saved. It’s much easier to be content to watch them die and dust your hands.“Oh well.”“Too bad.”“There was nothing we could have done.”Sitting in the cab of my father’s truck, assaulted by the stench of dirt and oil, I determined there was no nobility in staying in perpetual orbit around a sinkhole. That isn’t a life, that’s a waste of life.Self-evaluation isn’t to be feared, even when it brings you pain. There’s no glory in avoidance, only fear.To believe otherwise… is lazy.You all make this newsletter happen! Thanks for your sponsorship! I have payment tiers starting at as little as twenty dollars a year.Upgrade at 30% offUpgrade at 40% offUpgrade at 50% offUpgrade at 60% offI'm so happy you're here, and I'm looking forward to sharing more thoughts with you tomorrow.My CoSchedule referral linkHere’s my referral link to my preferred headline analyzer tool. If you sign up through this, it’s another way to support this newsletter (thank you).I'd Rather Be Writing is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to I'd Rather Be Writing at walterrhein.substack.com/subscribe